Malaya Reyes
Appearance Hardly intimidating by appearance, Malaya has a lean physique and a slightly-above average height for someone like herself. Her movements are typically energetic and bubbly, making her walking look more like a small skip or a jog because of it. She is very expressive, though she rarely shows any negative emotion - rather, she prefers to keep an upbeat demeanor. Her wide eyes are the closest to showing her more critical personality, as they are always closely surveying the environment around her. Malaya takes great care of her youthful looks, as she prefers to look younger than her actual age or older. As a result, she wears her hair in high pigtails, wears large hoop earrings, and dons large aviators on top of her head. It seems almost jarring compared to her fully-black leather work uniform, but Malaya privately considers it an accurate representation of who she is as a person, anyway. Otherwise, Malaya has a bold fashion taste and prefers attention-catching colors for her wardrobe. When Malaya was a teenager, her favorite hobby was experimenting with makeup. While she can’t fully incorporate her former passion into her current occupation, she still applies basics like foundation, eyeliner, and lip gloss. Personality Malaya is generally seen as a bubbly, energetic, and rather ditzy young girl. She gets bored easily and is always on the lookout to entertain herself, sometimes even tearing down others in the process. Malaya is very conscious of her actions, though, and targets with full intention, making her a cruel girl. This cruelty stems from her personal apathy from within. To the more keenly aware, Malaya is visibly seen as not only a terribly bored person, but one who suffers from emptiness. She is cynical, sarcastic, and pessimistic in her chances of overcoming her standstill. Instead, Malaya prefers to attempt embracing her inner void in the hopes she’d feel liberated. She keeps her rawer feelings suppressed and looks down upon them harshly, though she does not have a low self-esteem because of them. Rather, she completely alienates herself from those feelings, to the point she earnestly believes they are intrusive and not indicative of her own subconscious emotional misery. Malaya is very ambitious and selfish, working hard to get what she wants no matter what. She doesn’t consider herself a morals person, and is instead influenced by her own experiences and thoughts. While her best friend Alastair is able to make a sufficient moral and emotional case to her, she doesn’t naturally consider it and instead operates on her own rationale. This makes her very blunt in her reasoning, with rare exceptions to the point that it’s rooted in “because I want to/I can.” One trait that is true to both her external and internal personas is that Malaya is very flirty. She is impulsive and risky with her interests, and it is usually of a fleeting sexual nature she pursues them. When faced with long-term commitment, though, Malaya gets extremely uncomfortable as she doesn’t usually think about it. She ends up seeming flighty and indecisive as a result when she backs out. The truth is that she is very particular about a long-term partner and fears the emotional commitment that would be required of her to make it work. Malaya otherwise does not consider herself a romantic and therefore does not see herself with a stable partner anytime soon. In Axel’s workplace, Malaya holds her head high and refuses to be put down by others around her. She is extremely distrusting of her fellow colleagues, except for Alastair, because of the cutthroat nature that fills the area. She does not mind being viewed by her subordinates as a dumb girl with pigtails as the very same judgment helped her get to her position in the elite ten. Malaya, with her ambition, works hard to prove her worth in the case that should a minor worker truly doubt her abilities, she can prove them wrong. Background Relationships Family * Anna Fitzroy: * Landon Fitzroy: Colleagues * Ali Zayani: Malaya has an odd relationship with Ali because while she and he have no personal problems together, she pays attention to how he often mistreats Alastair. It leaves her very unhappy with him, but she leaves it to the side and keeps up pretenses with him for the most part. * Axel Ventura: Axel and Malaya have a professional yet casual relationship due to their similar personalities and general like-mindedness. Malaya knows Axel himself pretty well because she and Alastair are always near him. On a deeper level, Malaya aspires to be more like Axel because they are both empty and choose to embrace it. They get along well, and as seen in more recent events, Malaya has a powerful ability: getting Axel to reconsider key decisions. * Caden Fox: Malaya doesn’t mind Caden because they both like to drink and curse regularly, though she’s not as close to Caden as the others girls are to her. It doesn’t bother Malaya as she knows she and Caden have some key personality differences that would probably lead to a fight or two if they were any closer than they were now. * Mariana Dos Santos: Malaya both trusts and distrusts Mariana because she has done nothing wrong, but because of Malaya’s own actions in gaining her position, she can’t help but doubt Mariana’s honest demeanor. Like the others, Malaya humorously calls Mariana “Mom” because of her motherly approach to the members. * Matias Moreno: Malaya is infatuated with Matias, affectionately calling him “Mat” when she talks to him. While his looks initially attracted her to him, his personality became more appealing because of his aloofness. Although they come from completely different worlds, Malaya thinks that if they had a substantial interest in each other, it wouldn’t really matter. She only began to reconsider after seeing Matias’ true sensitivity show on the ship; Malaya doesn’t like overly sensitive people because of her own bluntness and impatience with raw emotions. * Naoko Asato: A fellow Asian and Hogwarts graduate, Naoko is a rather fun person for Malaya to occasionally pick on. Just like Caden and Stan, Naoko also seems pretty rigid with her, but Malaya figures that it’s due to her own childish personality and appearance. Unlike the two, though, Naoko is a bit more fun in Malaya’s eyes because they can banter far more by comparison. She just keeps in mind not to go too far as Naoko could easily snap back to her bossy self. * Sethos Elsaied: Malaya loves to joke around with Sethos just because he can’t take a joke himself, which to her is hilarious. Despite that, though, she respects him most out of the elite ten because of his experience. Their relationship is more professional than any other Malaya has with the other elite ten members because they tend to work together due to their abilities. They both have a certain control over Axel, in that Sethos is Axel’s logician and Malaya is Axel’s right-hand man. Malaya doesn’t scrutinize Sethos, instead listening to his orders each time and not looking deeper into his disturbed behaviour when it shows around her. * Seo-Yeon Lee: Malaya and Seo-Yeon have a joking relationship, though Malaya rolls her eyes at Seo-Yeon trying to patronize her every once in a while. She’s somewhat envious of Seo-Yeon being close to Matias, but her envy stops there because Seo-Yeon is otherwise, as Malaya would put it, “batshit crazy.” * Stan O’Brien: To Malaya, Stan is a very strict yet distant authoritative figure. She likes to joke about it with him when in a group, which is about the only time they ever really do talk to each other. Malaya can’t imagine speaking privately to Stan just because they can. * #13: #13, without a doubt, starts trouble with Malaya because of her own desire to be #1. Malaya knows this, but it doesn’t lessen her aggravation with her anyway. She wants to fight #13 and put her in her place, but because of #13’s position as a physical security worker, she’s refrained herself every time. Friends * Alastair Hollister: Alastair and Malaya are childhood friends, having attended Hogwarts together and the like. Malaya trusts him greatly, and while she’d go after anyone who hurt Alastair, she tends to hurt him out of her own selfishness. After their other childhood friend had died, she felt she could not express to him the growing emptiness inside her, though she did not doubt his ability to detect it. She gets very angry when he expresses too much concern for her liking, which tends to be pretty bad when they are in front of others. When they’re alone together, though, she relaxes and enjoys his company. She has an underlying romantic interest in him, but her desire to pursue it is very low because she is satisfied with just their friendship. She worries, though, even that is being jeopardized because of the growing tensions between Axel and Alastair. * Zara Kissami: Partners * #1 (Male): Malaya entered a romantic relationship with the new #1 after he had killed the original before Malaya herself could. Malaya did not care for him since she was using him to eventually betray him. * Roderich Delacroix: Malaya dislikes Roderich greatly because of his condescension towards her and Alastair. They attended Hogwarts around the same time, and Roderich’s unsympathetic comments made Malaya and Alastair feel very unhappy following their friend’s death. She did and still does avoid talking to Roderich whenever possible because of the bad feelings he brings back. Others * Cerulean Rorschach: Malaya did not personally dislike Cerulean and only poked fun at him because she was expected to. After he had used his EQ to read into her behaviour, she began to dislike him and grew crueler towards him for embarrassing her. Since then, though, Malaya does not cross Cerulean because she does not want to endure another critical analysis starring his EQ. * James Faraday: Malaya has some respect for James because he has nursed her fellow colleagues and has generally been a source of entertainment for her. She now empathizes with him to a degree after he had gone through his own EQ-shredding session with Cerulean. * Mason Solis: Like Shane, Malaya likes to pick on Mason, though on a lesser degree by comparison. He doesn’t normally provide her with anger or discomfort the way Shane does, but when she does elicit a similar response, she is very satisfied and tends to leave him be soon after. * Shane Rorschach: Malaya likes to pick on Shane the most because of how uneasy he feels around her. When he was under her and Alastair’s supervision, they used their magic to torture and ridicule Shane with their childish antics. Even though he doesn’t remember any of it, Malaya knows the discomfort is in there somewhere, especially when she says his name like “Shaaane.” * Wally Kopernik: Wally’s medical condition reminds Malaya of her deceased friend, causing her to feel obligated to help him when she can. She feels no need to be mean to him because of how positive he is, and instead she feels it necessary to treat him when she can. Malaya genuinely wants him to recover and live life as he deserves to live it.